Cycle
by did-you-reboot
Summary: When the Earth begins to rebuild itself following the Combine takeover, one Aperture Science inexplicably returns to public view headed by a certain lunatic. Sort of an alternate Resolution sequel. Slightly cracky.
1. Chapter One

**Cycle**

_A/N: This fic is sort of an alternate Resolution sequel, but you don't really need to know Resolution stuff to know what's going on in it. I had most of it written a while back, so I figured I'd finish the chapter up. Not sure if I'll keep working on it, buuuut yeah. At least another chapter before it's actually finished._

_Things to assume: Combine vs. everyone was resolved somehow and Combine went away, Earth is mostly going back to normal. Ahaha. I wrote it off a slightly crack idea, so it'll be best for you guys to suspend disbelief a bit._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

Jacqueline Wilkes bobbed on the balls of her feet in anticipation.

It might've looked unbecoming for her to look so absolutely excited, but at this moment, she didn't quite care regardless of the grin that her escort had on his face. She had every reason to be excited, and dammit, she was going to be excited.

It wasn't every day that someone got an engineering position at Aperture Science.

The interview process had been more nerve-wracking and grueling than she'd ever experienced in all her 47 years of age, but it was worth it all in the end. She won the position of lead engineer at the Aperture Science Biomedical Engineering Division in their tissue engineering department, and it was such a massive surprise that she'd stared blankly at her computer screen for several minutes when she read the acceptance email. She'd been underpaid and underappreciated at her old research position and had applied at Aperture Science at the insistence of a colleague who had managed to escape their god-awful laboratory for a job at Aperture.

Aperture Science had unexpectedly—and almost inexplicably—resurfaced from the bowels of the past a mere twenty years ago, but already it was known as one of the best (if not _the_ best) biomedical engineering firms in the country. It was true that Aperture Science had been a defense contractor in the old days prior to the invasion of the Combine and had disappeared from public view until well after the world had rebuilt itself from the ravages of Earth's alien invaders, but it reemerged as Aperture Science Biomedical Technologies and marketed its wholly remarkable Aperture Science Skin Replacement Mesh to any investors that would look twice at them. From what Jacqueline understood, it hadn't taken much to convince the investors to throw money at them for their quite amazing advances in biomedical engineering—and the rest, as they say, is history.

It was a place that _any_ engineer and scientist in any field would kill to work for, really. From biomedical researchers to mechanical engineers—Aperture Science wanted them all. For one of the many things remarkable about Aperture's laboratories was that they was almost entirely underground, nestled comfortably in the shell of an old salt mine. The Enrichment Center, as they called it, was a marvel of research and engineering: it allowed for both the research and development of new technologies, and provided a testing environment for any and all tests a scientist could ever want. Indeed, the arrangements there were so amazingly conducive to science that some never left the Enrichment Center—Jacqueline heard stories of such scientists living in the Enrichment Center's apartment-like employee accommodations for _weeks_ at a time.

While Aperture was known for their biomedical engineering advances, they had an applied physics research division that was beginning to garner quite a bit of attention. Jacqueline didn't know much about it, however: there was a shield of secrecy around the activities of that department so utterly complete that any information about it was incredibly vague and raised more questions than were answered. She wondered what went on in there to warrant such secrecy (as well as all the money Aperture was putting into it). Some said they were secretly making weapons for the government like the Aperture Science of old, and others said they were working on projects so dangerous that the public could not know for fear of mass panic and rioting. Jacqueline often laughed at these outlandish theories, but a small part of her wanted to agree—because for what else but something incredibly dangerous would all this secrecy be necessary?

"All right, we're here," said the escort as the lift slowed to a halt. "Do you know where to go?"

"Yes, thank you," Jacqueline said, smiling as she stepped out of the lift and into the bright fluorescent lights of the tissue engineering lobby. The lift closed behind her as she glanced around in search of the senior engineer that had interviewed her, but the lobby was devoid of any people—even the receptionist's desk was empty. A slight panic began to creep up from the bottom of her stomach as all manner of irrational thoughts began to invade her mind: had she been forgotten? Or did she end up in the wrong place, despite being taken there by that escort?

"_Welcome, new employee. An Aperture Science associate will be with you shortly. Please have a seat in the lounge area. To facilitate relaxation, smooth jazz will be deployed in three…two…one._"

Jacqueline had jumped at the sound of the pleasant—but obviously synthesized—male voice that had echoed through the empty lobby, and she was now staring up at the speakers, slack-jawed as smooth jazz began pouring out of them. The interviews had taken place in the conference rooms on the surface and she'd been dragged all throughout the surface complex without once hearing this voice. Aperture sure had some personality; honestly, smooth jazz piped in through the facility's announcement system for relaxation? She'd been lucky to have a radio of dubious functionality at her old laboratory…

"You must be Jacqueline Wilkes," came an unfamiliar voice. Jacqueline had been expecting the gravelly voice of the senior engineer that had hired her, not this pleasant female one…

She leapt to her feet when she realized who it was that was walking toward her.

"M-M-Ms. Johnson, th-this is an honor!" Jacqueline sputtered.

Chell Johnson, current CEO of Aperture Science, smiled as she extended her hand. She had a sort of calm look about her slightly lined face—as though nothing could ever faze her—and her eyes had an almost unsettlingly piercing quality about them. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Wilkes. I've heard good things about you from Howard," said Chell warmly. She had a surprisingly firm handshake for a fifty-something woman (or was she older?) and indeed, nearly crushed Jacqueline's hand. "This is my assistant, Millard Wheatley."

"Er, just Wheatley will do, actually," said the man behind her, grimacing at the sound of his name before extending his hand as well. He looked to be a bit younger than his boss and had the air of a man just barely getting by in his work, though Jacqueline couldn't blame him—surely being the assistant to the CEO herself was no cakewalk.

"Howard will be with you in a moment," Chell said pleasantly. "If I'd known he was going to be busy getting you into the swing of things today, then I would have saved my business with him for another time."

"Oh, it's no problem at all!" Jacqueline nearly squeaked. "Please don't worry about me."

Chell merely smiled in response before turning to Wheatley. "We have some time before my next meeting, don't we?" she asked.

"Yes! I'd say we have half an hour before we need to start heading to the conference room," Wheatley said brightly. With that, Chell turned to Jacqueline and nodded.

"In that case, I will see you around, Ms. Wilkes," she said before turning to usher Wheatley into the lift. "Come on, I could use a cup of coffee…"

Jacqueline wasn't the type of woman to be starstruck, but in this case, it was difficult not to be. She never expected to ever meet the CEO herself during her tenure at Aperture Science, and here she was on her first day shaking hands with her! Chell Johnson was well-known for being very good to her employees (and apparently had a bit of an eccentric streak hidden somewhere), and her extensive experience in applied physics was nothing to scoff at. It was slightly odd, however, that Aperture was more known for their biomedical advances rather than any physics advances considering the CEO's expertise, but it could simply be the case that the woman knew that their biotechnology would be what paid the bills (and, inexplicably, shower curtains).

"There you are, Jacqueline," came Howard's gravelly voice. She wheeled around and found the short and stocky engineer emerging from the same door that Chell had, straightening his lab coat as he walked toward her. "Sorry for the wait. It's not every day that Ms. Johnson comes calling, so when she does…Anyway, let's get you to your desk."

Jacqueline could hardly contain the butterflies fluttering about her stomach as Howard led her through the doors and towards the heart of the tissue engineering division. She looked about in wonder as they walked; everything in Aperture Science was so clean and white that she couldn't decide if it was simply good design aesthetic or too stiflingly sterile. "Excited, are you?" said Howard when he peered over his shoulder at her. "Got a smile wide as the interstate on your face."

"Oh! Ah—yes," she said in slight embarrassment as her ears warmed slightly. And though she wasn't quite sure why she felt compelled to say it, she added, "Sorry."

Howard let out a gruff chuckle. "Nah, don't be. We need that kind of thing around here."

She laughed nervously to mask her slight surprise. That certainly sounded…_ominous_, to say the least. Still, it did little to quell the little butterflies inside her as he led her through another pair of double doors and into a dimly-lit room full of neat little cubicles arranged in blocks of four. "We're all usually in the labs," said Howard as she followed him past rows and rows of empty cubicles. "Only really dump our things and do paperwork at the cubes. And this is yours."

Her cube—which contained a desk, a whiteboard, some drawers, a dual-monitor computer, and a name placard that read "[engineer name here]"—was already a step up from what she had back at her old job. It was nearly twice the space of her old cramped desk, and she had the added benefit of a clean, new whiteboard that wasn't stained with the grime of years and years of dry-erase marking. "Don't worry about your name thing," said Howard. "We'll get your name on there soon. Anyway, you got the IT packet, right?" She pulled out the envelope she'd been issued and held it up for him. He nodded once in approval. "Good. All of IT's stuffy rules are in there. Your username and password are too, so you should probably log in. I'll come back for you in a bit to show you around."

With that, Howard shuffled off.

When she sank down into the chair, the enormity of where she was sank in. Here she was in her own cubicle with her shiny new position as lead engineer of the tissue engineering division. Tissue engineering. At Aperture Science.

The tiniest squeak of joy left her throat.

Well, now that the joyful squealing was over with, it was probably time to check if her login information was working. She'd given the IT packet a quick look while she was waiting for her escort to arrive earlier and had been slightly dismayed with some of the rules (changing her network password every three months? It was hard enough to remember her password in the first place), though she supposed there _would_ be more rules in such a big company like Aperture. She only hoped that it wouldn't be too difficult to grasp their computing resources—she did not want to anger their tech support (which she _may_ have done at previous places of employment). So with that in mind, she hoped that she could at least log in to her computer without needing the help desk to hold her hand.

The computer didn't complain at her when she entered her username and password and pressed enter. _So far, so good_, she thought as she slumped back in her chair while her computer proceeded with logging in. While she waited, she cast her eyes about the room. It wasn't particularly remarkable—despite the dim light, she could tell the walls were a sort of off-whitish color and, in the corner of the room that she could see from her cube's opening, she could see an unusually-shaped camera fixed into the wall. So the long and tedious spiel that the HR representative had gone on was no joke—even the cubicles were monitored closely. It made her wonder how many monitors the security team had to look at all day…Considering the size of the Enrichment Center, there must be a veritable wall of monitors somewhere. Unless they had some other way of monitoring things…

"Hey, Jacqueline," came Howard's voice as he peered around the cube wall. "Let's go. Time to show you around."

* * *

><p>When Jacqueline finally sat down for lunch in the cafeteria with her new colleagues (and the one old colleague from her previous lab), her mind was buzzing from everything she had seen earlier in the morning. Everything in her laboratory was a dream come true: nearly all of the equipment was state-of-the-art, there was no shortage of supplies, and all the people working there were truly enthusiastic about their work. It almost seemed too good to be true, but Jacqueline didn't want to think about it in case the illusion suddenly crumbled before her eyes.<p>

"So how do you like it, Jackie?" said Hieu, the cheerful middle-aged man who'd convinced her to apply at Aperture. "Better than the dump we used to work at, eh?" Jacqueline could only laugh in reply, which prompted the laughter of the people in her company.

While her colleagues talked amongst themselves about one of the hiccups in their research, Jacqueline took the opportunity to cast her eyes around the cafeteria. It wasn't overly large, but it was sparsely populated enough that it made the room seem all the bigger for it. She did notice, however, that there was a corner of the room that most of the lunch-goers were giving wide berth, and to her surprise, said corner of the room was occupied by none other than Chell Johnson, her assistant, and a slender woman with bobbed hair that appeared to be gesturing furiously about something or other while Chell nibbled patiently at her salad.

"Hey, who's the lady over there with Ms. Johnson?" Jacqueline asked, turning to Hieu curiously.

"Oh, her? That's Gladys Cypress," Hieu said, wrinkling his nose. "She's head of the Applied Physics department _and_ the Computer Research department. They say she's a genius. Personally, I wouldn't go within ten feet of her."

Apparently this Gladys woman was well-known for her unbelievable expertise in physics and computer science, but was absolutely legendary for being near impossible to please and _absolutely_ impossible to befriend. It seemed that the only people that could hold down a conversation with Gladys without having it deteriorate into a cascade of sarcasm and insults were Chell Johnson and Mr. Wheatley. But evidently all the scientists and engineers under her enjoyed their work—once they learned how to cope with her abrasive (and at times _abusive_) demeanor, of course.

"I say all her engineers are Stockholmed for her," said the woman beside Hieu, grinning. "It's the only way to explain why they like her so much."

"Why does she get away with it? Being so mean to everyone, I mean," Jacqueline asked, frowning as she twisted the cap off her water bottle.

"Most people will say that she can get away with it because she's Ms. Johnson's best friend. But I have another theory," the bright-eyed younger man sitting beside Jacqueline, and she was slightly horrified to find him wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. "I think that she and Ms. Johnson are scre—"

"Nobody wants to hear your theory!" snapped the woman beside Hieu.

"But it's a _sexy_ theory!" protested the young man, a cheeky grin on his face as Hieu and the others burst into laughter.

"My god, don't you have any _shame?_"

* * *

><p>Chell couldn't hold back a grin as she watched her best friend venting her anger about whatever it was her moron engineers ruined this time. "I still wonder if it was a good idea to let a lunatic like you run Aperture—you keep hiring morons," was her favorite quip in times like these.<p>

"Well, we haven't blown up yet, so I think I'm doing pretty good," said Chell, letting out a laugh.

"You must be going senile in your old age," said GLaDOS, smirking. "I think you've forgotten that _I'm_ the one who keeps us from blowing up."

"Hey, hey, I help too!" Wheatley said indignantly, frowning in mock disappointment. "I mean, I've been trying very hard not to ruin all the brilliant work you're doing keeping us from blowing up."

Laughter (from Chell and Wheatley, anyway) filled the air as GLaDOS shot him an icy glare.

It was a routine that they developed over the years: Chell and Wheatley would attend to administrative matters in the morning and afternoon while GLaDOS dealt with the physics and computer science departments, but barring any sort of scientific breakthrough or emergency, they would meet somewhere for lunch. Not that GLaDOS or Wheatley actually _ate_ anything; rather, they sat and talked while Chell ate hers.

Androids didn't need to eat, of course.

"You know, didn't _you_ hire those morons you've been complaining about?" Chell said, arching an eyebrow at GLaDOS as she took a bite from her sandwich. "I haven't hired anyone for you in years."

"Oh, they were morons back then. I just thought I could beat the moron out of them."

"I appreciate that you weren't beating them with Weighted Storage Cubes. I'm sure you remember the last time you tried that."

GLaDOS rolled her eyes. "Oh, please. He was asking for it," she said airily. "He had no right to touch me. Let alone touch me where he did."

Chell grimaced at the memory of the poor man and his black-and-blue face. It was a good thing that it had happened within the walls of the applied physics department, or the legal team might not have been able to cover up what had happened…

"When are you going to come test the new excursion funnel?" GLaDOS asked, leaning in a bit over the table. "It doesn't use asbestos anymore. It doesn't feel _quite_ like science without the asbestos, but it needs to be tested all the same."

"You know I'm getting too old to test for you," said Chell, frowning. "Why don't you get one of your engineers to test it?"

"It's not the same watching them flailing around in the test chambers," GLaDOS said sulkily, averting her gaze to glare at the wall. "It's not fun if they scream at _everything_ I put in the chamber. Only a lunatic would like people screaming at them all the time. And _I'm_ not the lunatic around here."

"What about Blue or Orange?" Wheatley added brightly.

It was clear from the glare that GLaDOS gave him that this was not an acceptable alternative. And with that, Chell gave a small laugh. It wasn't about having a good test subject or testing the new excursion funnel at all…

"All right. I can give it a try later tonight."


	2. Chapter Two

**Cycle**

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><p><strong>Chapter Two<strong>

For all the technological and scientific advances going on within Aperture Science, it seemed that they still had run-of-the-mill computer monitors.

And Jacqueline's had decided it wanted to have a thick, multicolored stripe straight through the middle of her screen.

She liked to think of herself as a self-sufficient employee that knew how to turn on her computer and check her email. And indeed, in her six months at Aperture Science, she hadn't had any reason to call the help desk apart from the call that all new employees were required to make (which was, as Jacqueline understood it, a desperate attempt by Aperture IT to orient employees so that they wouldn't make moronic calls about their passwords or email quotas). To tell the truth, she actually felt a bit sorry for the IT department—for a company full of the best and brightest men and women in an era of considerable technological advancement, there were an awful lot of people that flaunted their computer illiteracy as though it was some kind of badge of honor.

And this was something that she couldn't solve herself. There weren't any spare monitors around, so she was really backed into a corner here. So there she was, listening to the pleasant hold music while she waited for an available help desk technician to answer the phone.

"_Good morning, this is Mitch. How can I help you?"_

Jacqueline sat up in her seat abruptly at the sound of the pleasant—yet quite obviously weary—voice coming out the phone receiver. "Ah, good morning, Mitch. My monitor—well, I don't know how to put this. It has a rainbow on it," said Jacqueline nervously.

There was a small chuckle on the other end of the line. "_A rainbow, huh? Well, not a problem. How long has it been doing that?_"

"Just today. Tried turning it off and on and jiggling the connectors, but no good. It sort of flickers around the rainbow."

"_All right, sounds good. Man, it's nice to not have someone yelling at me. We've been slammed this morning and everyone's cranky because they have to wait on hold for five minutes. _Five_ minutes…_"

"Aw, I'm sorry. I'm used to waiting over twenty when my home internet goes out," said Jacqueline, frowning. "I can deal with this monitor for now if you guys are busy…"

"_Oh no, don't worry about it. I appreciate the offer, though. Let's see…you're Jacqueline, right? Calling from extension 51339?_"

"Right. How'd you know?"

"_Your name and info pop up on my screen when you call as long as you entered your extension when the machine prompts you. Pretty convenient. Looks like you're in the TE division…Okay, how about this. We've got some spare monitors hanging around in here, last I checked. Do you mind if I put you on hold while I take a look?_"

Jacqueline couldn't help but make a tiny sound of pleasant surprise. "Oh! Sure, that'd be great!"

"_All right. I'll be there in…say, ten minutes. Sit tight._"

Jacqueline swiveled about in her seat before coming to a rest in front of her rainbow-striped monitor and drumming her fingers on the desk. Mitch said he wouldn't be long, though Jacqueline had no idea how long it'd take him to get to the tissue engineering offices since she had no idea where IT lived. She'd never thought to ask any of the technicians about it whenever she happened to cross paths with one—perhaps it was because many of them tended to look irritated when leaving some of the engineering divisions…

"Knock, knock."

She wheeled around and found the friendly face of a young-ish man with a narrow face and a scrawny frame peering at her from around the cubicle opening. He _looked_ young, anyway—couldn't be older than thirty—but there was something about his eyes that made Jacqueline second-guess herself. Not that they were particularly outstanding; indeed, they were the opposite of outstanding and seemed to blend in softly with the rest of his face. That coupled with the way he seemed to subtly cast his eyes around him suggested to Jacqueline that he was looking for something. Her monitor, perhaps?

"Jacqueline Wilkes, right?" he said, pulling a little cart with a monitor sitting atop it into view.

"That's me. Thanks for coming so soon," said Jacqueline, smiling and getting up to shake his hand. He had a good firm handshake, which was a nice change from the less-than-substantial ones she usually got from the men around Aperture.

"No problem at all. I needed to get out of my cube anyway," he laughed. "So where's the rainbow monitor?"

When Jacqueline gestured at her monitor with the offending pixel-rainbow stripe on it, he let out a chuckle. "Yep, this monitor's busted. Good thing I brought you a new one, eh? Give me a second and you'll be all hooked up with a new one."

There was a slightly awkward silence as Mitch huddled under her desk to disconnect the monitor—one that Jacqueline felt an urge to fill rather than stand there and twiddle her thumbs while he worked. "So," she said when he emerged from under her desk, "where do you guys work?"

"We were up on the surface complex for the longest time," Mitch said as he pulled the monitor's cables out from behind the desk, "but they finally moved us onto this level. It kind of sucked having to come all the way down here from the surface just to deliver a mouse or to take a peek at a server. Then again, we do run into angry people more often now that our offices are down here..."

Jacqueline frowned. "So do people really get angry at you guys for doing your job? I always hear these horror stories and wonder if it's that bad all the time..."

"Oh, we have great people like you," said Mitch as he lifted the old monitor away from the desk and out of the way. "But I've had tons of people blame me when _they_ couldn't figure out that they used up their entire email quota and couldn't send emails. I mean, the message it pops up says to delete your emails. How hard is it to _read_? Still, though, working tech support has its perks," he added with a small laugh.

"Oh? Like what? Free keyboards?"

"Well, sometimes. But what I like about it," Mitch said as he crawled under the desk to connect the new monitor, "is that we get to learn a little bit about what's going in in the whole company. Some of the engineers love to talk about their work while I fix their things. Except the physics department guys. I can never get them to let anything slip."

"Never?" asked Jacqueline in awe. Mitch laughed again.

"They're good, those physics guys. They even have their own servers — makes me wonder if they have their own IT department to maintain them," said Mitch as he crawled out from under the desk. "But I know one of our guys goes to deliver fresh monitors and keyboards and stuff when they need it..."

"I've always wondered about them," Jacqueline said, folding her arms over her chest and furrowing her brow. "I mean, what do they do there? I walked by one of the entrances to their division and heard the loudest grinding sound. Nobody could explain what the sound was."

"I heard they have some huge machines back there to move entire blocks around," he said as he turned on the new monitor. There was a bit of a flicker, but it came right up with her login screen — sans rainbow stripe. "Well, looks like you're good as new. Try not to break this one."

Jacqueline bristled indignantly. "I didn't do anything to it! I treat all my computer things very well, thank you very much."

As Mitch loaded the old monitor onto his cart, he gave her a wink. "I'm sure you do," he laughed. Before he wheeled his cart away — almost as though it was an afterthought, he paused and added, "How's about I let you know if I can ever get clearance to get into the physics department? You seem like you'd appreciate it. All my coworkers think I should just let it go." She couldn't help but roll her eyes at him.

"Oh yeah, good luck with that."

* * *

><p>The veil of secrecy around the physics department was never too far from Jacqueline's thoughts. She'd been there almost a year now and was still pondering the mysteries behind the physics department doors — well beyond the time that <em>most<em>new employees' curiosity over the department expired. It was easy to understand why they stopped wondering about the deafening noises and the furtive scientists and mysterious expenses; with no way to satisfy that curiosity, only the most curious — or indeed, borderline fanatical — people still fervently harbored their theories about the department hidden behind the doors.

Jacqueline didn't like to think of herself as a fanatic. She'd admit that _maybe_she was nosy at times.

And this was one of those times.

"You look nervous," said Mitch, smirking at her and giving her a sidelong glance. "Nobody will catch us, don't worry."

Her nerves may have been due to the fact that she was currently standing in a lift with Mitch, the help desk technician, with the intention of sneaking into the physics department. They'd actually struck up quite a friendship over the few months since he'd replaced her faulty monitor—more and more often Jacqueline had found herself taking a late lunch after dealing with her project affairs and had ended up finding Mitch on his lunch break in the cafeteria with some regularity. He was a pleasure to talk to and often had help desk horror stories that she found bizarrely fascinating—and to her surprise, he could follow along relatively well if she talked about tissue engineering and the lab mishaps that tended to plague her project.

But perhaps what may have really cemented in their friendship with each other was not the mutual enjoyment of each other's company, but rather the mutual obsession the both of them had for finding out what in the world the physics department was _doing_.

And tonight they had every intention of finding out.

It wasn't unheard of for someone to sneak into the physics department, of course: there had been a handful people that had gotten in and had subsequently gotten caught and were subjected to extreme verbal abuse by Gladys (apparently in public view as well). It was curious, however, how some of the people who'd snuck in had been almost immediately transferred to the physics department; was it some sort of maneuver to secure the internal secrets within the department by absorbing anybody who got too close? The few people that were simply reprimanded hadn't actually seen anything of interest, so it made Mitch and Jacqueline wonder what those taken into the department had encountered…

She wasn't sure that this was the best career move for the lead engineer of R&D for Aperture's commercial tissue biotech, but her curiosity was becoming unbearable. Mitch had said they'd only take a quick peek and that nobody should be around at this time of night.

A quick peek wouldn't hurt, right?

"Look, are you sure nobody's going to find out?" Jacqueline asked nervously. Mitch let out a small chuckle.

"I told you, my buddy in security's going to be conveniently distracted right about now. Besides, it's right around when Perkins leaves, and everyone knows he's a bit of an airhead. We can blame him."

When the lift opened to reveal one of the doors to the physics department, Jacqueline briefly entertained the idea of simply taking the lift back to her floor. In fact, she would have if Mitch hadn't gotten a hold of her sleeve and pulled her out of the lift. "Come on, come on, life's boring if you don't take a few risks," he said cheerfully (a little _too _cheerfully for Jacqueline's liking).

"You still never said how you were going to get us in," said Jacqueline when Mitch pulled her right up to the doors. He gave her a wink and held up his employee badge.

"It helps to have a friend in the badge group, because we can get in…_like so._"

He pressed his badge to the card reader on the wall and, to Jacqueline's astonishment, there was a tiny _beep_ and the unnaturally loud sound of the door unlocking. "Here we go," said Mitch, who had an almost endearingly giddy grin across his face.

And they opened the doors—

—to a perfectly ordinary hallway.

It was almost anti-climactic, really, despite the fact that Jacqueline hadn't really known what to expect. Not this sort of normalcy, perhaps. The hallway was a little older-looking, perhaps, and a little more worn, but still obviously a part of Aperture Science. Perhaps the only thing that really merited a second glance was the curious rail fixed onto the ceiling. Still, it was all astonishingly unremarkable and Jacqueline felt a little disappointed that she'd been so nervous over _this_.

"Hey hey hey, where you going?" said Mitch when she turned to leave. "Come on, let's go in further."

"I don't know if that's such a—hey!" She found him pulling her down the hallway by the sleeve before she could even put a hand on the door.

"We're already in—might as well take a look," he said, grinning when she wrenched her sleeve out of his fingers.

And despite her reservations, deep down inside Jacqueline really did want to take a closer look.

He was right—they were already in—and she might never have this opportunity again.

They didn't have much to look at, however—most of the doors they came across were firmly locked and would not respond to Mitch's badge. Even Mitch was ready to turn back (with every intention of pestering his badge-group friend about the badge shortcomings) until one door they tried fortuitously opened when they tried it. The label on the door was "Chamber 27 Observation Deck," so Jacqueline assumed it was some kind of testing environment for whatever physics experimentation they might be doing here.

What she _didn't_ expect was to find the observation deck overlooking an enormous room that had a frankly baffling lack of physics experimentation going on within it. There was a baffling lack of _anything_ in it, really. There was a storage cube sitting on a ledge in the distance and some kind of button on the floor, but otherwise the only interesting thing about the room was the _lack_ of things in the room. Jacqueline was actually more interested in the coffee mugs and various clipboards scattered around the observation deck (which had notes regarding whatever an ASHPD was).

One more for the This-Is-More-Boring-Than-Expected tally.

Mitch, however, looked utterly fascinated. "What's this room all about?" he murmured to himself, pressing his face to the observation deck's glass in an attempt to see what was below.

Jacqueline jumped in surprise when an orange blur passed by the glass of the observation deck, and she found herself being pulled to the floor and out of view. "_Get down, get down, someone's there_," Mitch hissed, pulling on her wrist. The tension was almost palpable as they crouched below the window—neither dared to even breathe as they waited for any sounds to indicate a person's presence. Was that even a person that had fallen past the window?

"_I really like these…How did that look, Wheatley?"_

"_Absolutely brilliant! She really outdid herself with these—you don't even need the boots anymore!"_

The two intruders to the observation deck exchanged wide-eyed glances at the voices drifting out of a speaker on the wall. These voices…

…What were Chell Johnson and her assistant doing in that chamber?

"_GLaDOS, I really like these new legs. I really appreciate it._"

"_I didn't make them for your benefit. It was just convenient to make them match your leg fittings. Now you can test more—I expect they'll make you…oh, fifteen percent more efficient at solving tests. I'm being _very_ generous today, by the way. Any other day and it might have been thirteen percent. Maybe even ten."_

"_Leg fittings?"_ Jacqueline mouthed at Mitch, who shrugged but gave her a roguish grin nonetheless.

To her horror, she found him turning and slowly bringing himself up to peer into the chamber from the corner of the window. He watched silently and, after a few long moments, gestured for Jacqueline to do the same. _We're going to get caught we're going to get caught we're going to get caught_ was the only thing that was going through Jacqueline's head as she did so, but all thoughts were forestalled when she caught sight of what Mitch was looking at.

It was their CEO down there all right, but if Jacqueline hadn't first heard the voices through the speaker beforehand, she would have never thought that the woman standing down in that chamber was Aperture Science's own Chell Johnson. She was wearing some sort of black suit that looked very much like some sort of wetsuit, which in itself wasn't too surprising if not for the bright orange pants she was wearing over it. The pants were rolled up to the knees, and if Jacqueline didn't know any better, she might have thought that Chell was barefoot…

…if not for the fact that her feet looked distinctly metallic.

Jacqueline had seen some of Aperture's remarkable robotic prosthetics, but even from her vantage point high on the observation deck, she could tell that whatever Chell's feet were made of were on a whole other level.

"_Can you activate a faith plate for me? I want to try another jump_," came Chell's voice. She wasn't addressing anyone in particular, and in fact was simply staring up vaguely toward the ceiling.

"_Er, might not be the best idea to push the new legs so hard,_" said Wheatley from somewhere out of view. _"Remember what happened last time…?"_

"_Don't listen to the moron. There is a zero-percent chance of that happening with these new legs,_" came Gladys's irritated voice. So she was watching from somewhere…Was there some kind of control room for this chamber? _"Here, I even calibrated it to fling you _extra_ high. Because I actually have faith in you. Unlike a certain someone._"

If Jacqueline didn't have a better handle on herself, she might have yelped in surprise.

Chell had leapt onto the thing on the floor (in itself surprising for a woman her age, and even more so for the absolute _vigor_ with which she did so), and was flung high, high into to the air, did some sort of somersault-twist at the peak, and began her descent toward the floor far below. Jacqueline could hardly believe that she'd gone so high and could barely look as the CEO went speeding down toward the floor. There was going to be a horrific splat—her legs were going to be crushed and broken falling from that height—it'll be absolutely horrible—

She landed on her feet in a crouching squat.

There was a distinct _THUD_, but she had landed perfectly on her feet.

And proceeded to stand up and stretch her back.

Jacqueline put a hand to her mouth. This was—this was inhuman. How in the world did a fifty-something woman do something like that?

How in the world could a _human being_ do something like that?

"_Oh, I'm getting old,"_ said Chell, groaning as she straightened up. "_I really felt that one in my spine._"

"_I've already changed your legs out with those. You could go for a full set and change out the rest of your body. Think of the endless science we could do if you didn't need to eat and sleep._"

"_Nice try, but the answer is still no," _Chell laughed as she walked off out of view. "_Come on, Wheatley, let's finish up the test so we can go home…_"

The curious scientist in Jacqueline wanted to stay at the window and watch whatever test the CEO herself was taking part in, but the rational part of her brain told her that now would probably be a very good time to _get the fuck out_. _Especially_ if Gladys was somewhere nearby. She turned to Mitch, who was peering at the clipboards that she hadn't been able to make any sense of, and tapped his shoulder. "We should go," she whispered, and was pleased to find that he was nodding in agreement.

She was significantly less pleased, however, to find that he was stuffing a sheet from a clipboard into his pocket.

"_What are you doing?_" she said in horror.

"Come on, come on, let's go," he said, nudging her toward the door. "Don't worry about it. Just wanted a little souvenir."

"_Put that back! You want to get fired?_"

"Nobody's going to get fired," was all Mitch kept saying while he ushered her down the stairwell. It did little, however, to ease Jacqueline's worry. For all they knew, that paper could involve something top secret that they weren't authorized to know about. Hell, they weren't even authorized to be in this part of the facility—of course they wouldn't be authorized to know about whatever that ASHPD was.

When they reached the door leading back into the hallway, Mitch peered almost dramatically through the little window for a few moments. Honestly, he looked as though he was having tons of fun while Jacqueline was there fretting away behind him. "Looks like we're all clear," he said, finally pulling his face away from the window and pulling the door open.

"Well hey now, Pinky, guess you weren't lying about these intruders of yours this time."

"The Fact Sphere is never wrong. It is reality that gets it wrong over ninety percent of the time."

Jacqueline could hardly contain the shriek of surprise that threatened to escape her throat when she found two little metal—spheres?—peering down at her from the rail mounted on the hallway's ceiling. Even Mitch had been so shocked that he'd backed away right into the corner of the doorway hard enough to briefly seize up in pain. Jacqueline herself didn't quite know what to do—what do you do when you find talking metal balls talking to each other?

The one with the green—eye?—fixed its gaze on her and flapped its eye shutters in what Jacqueline surmised to be (to her slightly horror) some sort of wink.

"Weeeeell now, a pretty lady such as yourself shouldn't be slinkin' around here this time of night. Tell me, gorgeous, what brings you two to our neck of the woods?"

* * *

><p><em>AN: Ahaha, this is nowhere near the quality of Resolution and is probably full of typos and junk, but I hope you guys like it anyway. Been a little stressed out lately, so I finished up the chapter._


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